Are there Muslim Samaritans?
By Uwe Siemon-Netto, UPI Religious Affairs Editor, January 6, 2005
PARIS – As the world is focused on the victims of the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia, a debate is raging among Muslim scholars about an ancient topic: Who is your neighbor?
“Some insist it’s the fellow Muslim,” says the Rev. Hans Voecking, one of the Roman Catholic Church’s leading experts on Islam. “Others feel charity should be extended to any human being.”
One Muslim internet blogger accused his coreligionists of “racism” because their aid is chiefly directed at Islamic nations.
Well, racism is clearly the wrong term, for racism is one evil Muslims cannot be accused of. More likely, many – though definitely not all – Muslim thinkers have a deficient view of man, meaning that only those who share their faith deserve maximum charity.
“The problem is that the Good Samaritan and Christ’s commandment to love your enemy are not concepts you will find in the Koran,” explains Christine Schirrmacher, president of the Bonn-based Islamic Affairs institute.
Hence, Muslim concern is reserved for the Umma, or Islamic community. Wander through Muslim Web sites, and you will find ample confirmation for this insight.
Of course some Muslims find this embarrassing. One blogger pillories the stinginess of the Saudi Arabian government, which offered only a $10 million contribution to tsunami relief operations. “Contrast this with $155 million raised a year ago in a Saudi telethon to support the families of Palestinian suicide-bombers,” the blogger writes.
This debate is particularly fascinating as it points to signs of an emerging Western Islam that has come under some influence of Christian views on charity, which reject the idea of discriminating against needy people based on their religious persuasion.
It would be unthinkable, for example, for huge charitable Christian organizations such as the Catholic Relief Services or the Lutheran World Relief to give preference to Catholic or Lutheran – or even just Christian – recipients.
But then Christian theology rules out statements such as this one by the prophet Mohammed: “Whoever relieves a believer in this world, Allah will relieve him of some of his distress on the Day of Judgment.”
The example for a Christian to follow is the one given by Jesus in his parable of the Samaritan who looked after an anonymous victim of robbery not knowing anything about his identity (Luke 10:25-37). The gist of this story is that he who shows mercy will inherit eternal life.
This is precisely, says Schirrmacher, the topic of a controversy raging between Christians and Muslims – and Muslims and Muslims – in their current dialogues.
At issue here is the difference between, say, Seventh Day Adventist hospitals healing Buddhists, Hindus, pagans or even atheists, and Saudi-sponsored hospitals in some parts of Africa treating patients for free only if they convert to Islam.
The controversy may well be drawing to a close in countries such as the United States, where a Western form of Islam is emerging, an Islam working closely with Christians and Jews in such charitable endeavors as the present tsunami relief operations.
But similar turns seem to occur in some Middle Eastern states, such as Qatar, on whose Web site, Islam Online, the sheikh on duty issued this hopeful fatwah (religious expertise) on the question of what kind of disaster victims Muslims should help:
“Islam is a universal call for mercy to all human beings. It urges Muslims to rush to the help of their fellow afflicted humans, especially at times of distress. ”